


and the captain is the whale

by windbellows



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:15:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26280040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windbellows/pseuds/windbellows
Summary: In the mornings, the Old Man plays to the seagulls.
Relationships: Link & Wind Fish (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 25





	and the captain is the whale

**Author's Note:**

> [the sun spills summer on summer on summer on where you rest/but i’ll love you even more when i am sure there’s nothing left](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8hEwCx3qN8&ab_channel=ButcherBoy-Topic)  
> this is an amalgamation of works that i've deleted and reuploaded over the past half year and eventually said fuck it i'll put it all together. if you notice i've come back to edit completely yes i did. g*d i'm obsessed with the wind fish and koholint and link

On the shores to the west of Hyrule there lies a small fishing village, and above the village on a cliff, connected by a meandering dirt path, sits a hut of sea-breeze wood. An Old Man lives inside - a kindly soul with a smile so soft it could break a heart, and in the mornings, before even the first fisher wakes, he plays to the seagulls on the beach. It is his music to which the village wakes. The children think him a magic man, for he draws song from no instruments, and the adults can tell he is no ordinary being, but they also know not to pry. The children love him. They plead for him to “play the wind” far after the light of dawn disappears from the ocean and he does, of course, for who can refuse?

They run up the path up the cliff to the hut and knock on his door, and he answers, and he gives them treats, pastries from the town he came from, or so they assume. He’s not the best at baking, but they put a smile on the faces of the children, and they wipe their mouths and say _Thank you, Old Man!_ , and run back down. When he first came to the village, he did not give a name. When asked, he simply signed, _Call me the Old Man, for that is who I am now,_ and he had seemed to think it funny. So they did, though the adults sighed, sometimes. 

The children never ask to go inside his hut, out of politeness, and he does not invite them. It’s not out of ill will; the villagers respect privacy, as one’s home is a reflection of the soul, and you may knock but you must never go inside unless _asked_. The Old Man heartily embraced this - in fact, he had embraced it long, long ago, when he was still but a boy and his house was suddenly lonesome. There’s not much of anything notable in his hut in the first place, and at night he sits in the rocking chair by the window overlooking the sea and stares out at the sunset, listening to the creaks and the waves against the sand. A sword lies against the wall, in plain sight, untouched for years. The Old Man doesn’t bother to hide it. He doesn’t get close visitors, not anymore. 

And in the mornings he plays his music, lifting and waving his hands like a conductor, like the ones in some of the festivals that used to happen in Kakariko, and the seagulls on the beach gather, and flap down, and flap away. He plays of things that have already been, the endless sky and grass like trees and a bridge in a forest, and a terrible, stormy night, and he plays of things that have yet to come, giants of material that whispers blue like his sword and grass growing in the ruins, and its soft exhalation, and he plays of things that never were, and always have been. The wind sings his song and the seagulls carry it in their feathers, clasped in their talons and clutched in their beaks, far and wide, and the Old Man closes his eyes and sees red hair and the egg on the mountain and the ballad dances across the ocean waves, and in the wake of the seabirds. 

“That is a very pretty song,” murmurs one of the adults to him one day, a woman of about forty years old. The sea has settled in the lines near her eyes. “Is it about someone?”

 _I heard it in a dream,_ he responds.

He holds the secret of the ballad close (and Koholint closer, like a blade pointed at his heart but it’s already pierced, and his blood has already spilled) but he made a promise to never forget, and to never forget _her_ , so he gives the ballad to the wind and the waves, so they must remember. It’s a tune hummed by the villagers, sang softly under breath. 

The seagulls know; he can see it in their eyes. They cry secrets to the air, and maybe they’re confessing in his place, which he wouldn’t really mind, in all guilty honesty. It won’t be off his chest for a long time, and never, if he has his way. 

_I didn’t have my way for so long_ , the Old Man thinks wryly. _Thank the goddesses I have it_ now.

\--

In the afternoon, when the sun is high over the Necluda Sea, two young men crouch near nocturnal fragments. There's still one missing. Garini rambles on about the properties of luminous stones and how they may have been used in what the fragment used to be but he doesn’t know _why_ and Link hums along, adding bits here and there, and it turns out he has stories, of luminous stones near the mist of the Faron Woods and the ruins there, and the moss that runs over them, soft to the touch. “They’re old ruins,” he tells Garini, “older than all the others I’ve seen.”

Garini purses his lips. “The Faron Woods aren’t _that_ far away. If I could get a horse-“

“Don’t,” Link interrupts. “It’s dangerous there. I’ll take pictures for you.” 

The last fragment lies submerged at the tip of the crescent beach. Link holds his hand beneath the water against the ancient stone. The green light glows through his palm. A seagull lands nearby, staring at Link. It ruffles its wings.

Later, the two of them sit against the freshly-awakened shrine, enjoying the evening. The sea breeze is cool on Link’s face.

“Do you hear that?” Garini’s voice is soft, but intent. 

“Hear what?”

“The wind singing. I hear it every night. Some folks back home, I think they’d call it the ghosts of drowned sailors, caught in a storm or something, but if I’m being honest it sounds like the wind itself.”

Link leans back against the wall. Maybe it’s singing to someone. For someone. Maybe it’s one of the ghosts said to haunt Eventide, wailing to the seasalt winds.

“Yeah,” he says quietly, “I hear it too.” 

\--

It is not often the Old Man gets travelers at his door, seeking shelter, and he offers for them to come inside and they do, gratefully. If they recognize his sword leaning against the wall they do not mention it, and if they recognize _him_ , they don’t say anything, which he appreciates. It’s been some time since he’s stepped foot in Hyrule, and when he left he carried the Kakariko accent with him, but perhaps they do recognize him as a secret-bearer, for what it’s worth. The Hero is made of secrets, made of memories. 

A salesman may come, and the Old Man may make an offer and the salesman may accept, and come inside, and he will ask many questions and his gaze will not dart towards the sword against the wall, for he does not know who this is. You hail from Hyrule. _Yes._ You were once a knight, then. _No._ But the sword? _A sword does not a knight make._ Where did you find it? _In woods that spoke my name._ What is your name? _It died with the sea._

The salesman leans closer. "How will you die?"

The Old Man sits back, thinks. _The sea will take me back,_ he says.

On clear nights when he can bear to look the Old Man sees the stars like they were in Koholint, and it does feel like a dream, sometimes. No one speaks of the Wind Fish, nor evokes his name, but the thoughts of the Old Man drift to the ghost by the bay, within the dream, dead and dead again or maybe not at all. Maybe they had a tether in the waking world, or maybe they were already dead, and that was their soul in the dream, but no matter what it was forever severed when he played on the stairs on the stars.

He wants to forget, sometimes and selfishly, when the memories become too much to bear - but it would be a disservice to Koholint, to forget. The ghost and the nightmares, so desperate for life; the Mabe villagers, the helpful old man, the children who knew more without knowing; Tarin, lost in the woods and the hills. It would be a disservice to Marin and her sea-lily self, and so the Old Man remembers, fiercely so, clinging to the memories like a boat in a storm, no matter how much it hurts.

In all his lives he'll never encounter anything like the Wind Fish, and the Wind Fish will never encounter anyone like him.

He weeps, under the gaze of the seagulls. 

The Old Man disappears one day, just like that, leaving nothing behind but mist of a smile and a song in the old wooden walls, so achingly soft, and a tray of pastries, left out for the children. A shadow passes over the sea, from somewhere above the clouds, above the sky, above the stars. The cries of the seagulls rise to a cacophony. 

\--

Eventide sticks out like a sore thumb, and it feels like one too, and Link takes a moment on the highest point to sit and catch his breath and stare out at the water, towards the horizon where the sea and the sky start to blur. Maybe they are one and the same, so infinite they must touch at some point, intertwine and release; Link throws a rock, watching it fly and hit and sink. A tiny splash in the big ocean. 

When he heads out as far as he can go, sometimes, Link hits the point where the wind blows too strongly to move forward and he squints into it, wondering what’s out there. He'll peer into the water from atop his raft and he will see nothing, but he hears it, a bottomless sea of the sea and he'll decide there's something down there, a slumbering secret - for now he throws another rock, disturbing the surface, disturbing the dreamer, and he gets up and heads back towards the Hinox, as quietly as he can manage. 

Eventide is not a haunted place. Any voices here are nothing but the wind sighing. 

Link sleeps, and he dreams, and he wakes and he sleeps and he is not granted rest. The castle waits, the egg on the mountain.

A shadow once passed over Hyrule, and Farosh, on her path near the Lake near the Plateau, sank below the surface. The Wind Fish is old, older than time and older than dreams; he sang this world into being, and when the time comes he will sing it to sleep and continue on his way. 

He sang then, over the shrine within the risen ground, a song of awakening, a favor for a favor. 

\--

The wind blows hardest on Eventide. Link stands on the highest point and gazes to where the sky becomes the sea, and a seagull flies down. He lifts a hand, as if to touch it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
